UGC KPIs: how to measure a UGC campaign, from views to installs

Published 2 October 2026 · by UGC Pocket · ~11 min read

Start from the objective, not from the dashboard

Most dashboard numbers help you diagnose, not decide. Before launch, choose the objective, one primary KPI that says whether the campaign worked, and two or three diagnostic metrics that explain why. Write them into the brief: our UGC brief template has room for it. For the whole process, from brief to launch, see how to run a paid UGC campaign with creators.

1. Awareness. People who did not know you see the product. Primary KPI: views, or unique viewers when the platform provides them.
2. Consideration. Viewers look further: they open a profile, ask a question in the comments, save the video, search for your name.
3. Action. They click, sign up, install, start a trial or buy.

Judged on everything at once, a campaign always has a number that looks good. Pick one.

UGC KPIs by objective

For software, apps, services and training, action usually means a sign-up, an install or a booked demo, so app store reports and product analytics matter more than a sales report. Our page on UGC for mobile apps covers the app case.

Precise definitions: a view is not the same everywhere

• TikTok, paid. In Ads Manager, a video view counts each time the video starts to play, replays excluded. TikTok also reports 2-second and 6-second views, views at 25, 50, 75 and 100% of the length, and the average play time per view.
• TikTok, organic. In TikTok Studio, each post shows its retention rate (how much of the video people watched), average watch time, the share of viewers who watched it in full and its traffic sources; the overview adds profile views and the search queries that led to the content. These figures sit in the creator's account: ask for them.
• Instagram. Views count the times content was played or displayed; viewers count the unique accounts that saw it on screen at least once. Instagram flags viewers as estimated and in development, and its insights cover the past 90 days.
• Reach and frequency. In TikTok's ads glossary, reach is the estimated number of unique accounts that saw your ads at least once; frequency, the average number of times each saw it.

So report TikTok and Instagram views per platform, and give a total only with that caveat. And pair views with a retention metric: views alone say nothing about attention.

Sources: TikTok Ads, video play metrics (updated November 2025), TikTok Creator Academy, Introducing TikTok analytics (updated 1 October 2026), Instagram Help Centre, About Instagram insights, TikTok Ads Manager glossary (updated November 2025). Checked 2 October 2026.

The formulas: CPM, cost per view, CPA, ROAS and ROI

Every cost metric is a cost divided by a count. Use the full cost: content, rights, platform or management fees, ad spend if any, and your team's time. Our guide to UGC pricing lists these lines. Then name the denominator.

Source: TikTok Ads Manager glossary for CPM and CPV (updated November 2025), Google Ads Help, about Target ROAS bidding for ROAS. Checked 2 October 2026.

There is no universal "good" CPM or cost per install for UGC. Compare with your own campaigns and paid media, measured the same way. For per-view programs, see what content rewards really pay.

The tracking toolkit: set it up before the first video goes live

UTM links

UTM parameters tell your analytics where a visit came from. Google says to always set utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, and to use utm_content to tell creatives apart. Values are case sensitive, so "TikTok" and "tiktok" become two sources, and missing parameters show up as "(not set)".

A convention for UGC: utm_source for the platform, utm_medium for the channel (ugc for organic posts, paid_social for ads), utm_campaign for the campaign, utm_content for the creator and the video. As a template: ?utm_source=tiktok&utm_medium=ugc&utm_campaign=launch&utm_content=creator01_v1. If an agency runs your ads, share the convention so both reports use the same labels.

Where the link goes

On TikTok, a profile can show a website link only with at least 1,000 followers or a Verified Business Account. Many UGC creators have neither. Workarounds: a short address or code spoken and shown on screen, leading to a tagged landing page; your own account, tagged in the video, with your link in its profile; and paid distribution, where Ads Manager reports clicks. Spark Ads turn organic posts into ads, including other creators' posts with their authorization: see our guide to TikTok Spark Ads.

App campaign links

On iOS, App Store Connect campaign links carry a campaign token (ct) that you can set per creator. A first download within 24 hours of using the link counts as a first-time download for that campaign. A campaign appears at least 24 hours after launch, once it has first-time downloads from at least five users. On Android, Play Console reads utm_source and utm_campaign on links to your store listing and reports them as tracked channels; data below minimum thresholds is grouped into "Other".

Codes and a question at sign-up

Give each creator a code, such as a longer trial, spoken and shown in the video. It tells you which creator someone got it from, not where they first heard of you, since codes get shared. Add an optional question at sign-up with "a TikTok or Instagram video" among the answers: it catches people who watched, never clicked and typed your name later.

Branded search

Announced in November 2025 and available to all eligible sites since March 2026, Search Console's branded queries filter separates queries containing your brand, its variants and misspellings from the rest. It works for top-level properties with enough query volume, and Google warns that some queries may be misclassified. Compare branded clicks before and after the campaign.

Ads Manager, for paid distribution

Ads come with platform attribution. In Meta's standard settings, click-through counts events within 1 or 7 days of a link click, view-through within 1 day of an impression, and engage-through within 1 day of a non-link action, which for video includes a 5-second play. These windows apply to website and in-store conversions; iOS 14 and later app install campaigns report differently, with 1-day or 7-day click under Meta's attribution, or through Apple's SKAdNetwork. TikTok Ads Manager sets click-through, engaged view-through and view-through windows per ad group, and notes that this setting does not change what your mobile measurement partner reports.

Sources: Google Analytics Help, URL builders, TikTok Support, adding a website link to your profile, TikTok Ads, about Spark Ads (updated June 2026), TikTok Ads Manager glossary, Apple, App Store Connect campaign links, Play Console Help, acquisition and retention, Play Console Help, understand and grow your app's user base, Google Search Central, branded queries filter (20 November 2025, updated 11 March 2026), Meta, attribution models and settings, TikTok Ads, attribution window (updated February 2025). Checked 2 October 2026.

What organic attribution cannot tell you

Tagged links measure clicks. Much of what an organic video does is not a click.

• Delayed visits. Someone watches on a phone and searches for your name on a laptop a week later. Your analytics files that visit under organic search or direct traffic.
• App privacy. On iOS 14.5 and later, an app needs the user's permission through App Tracking Transparency to track them across other companies' apps and websites; without it, the advertising identifier is all zeros. An install that started with a video can look like a store search.
• Different rules, different totals. App Store Connect, Play Console, Meta and TikTok each count with their own rules and windows. Their numbers will not match.
• Estimates. Instagram labels viewers as estimated, and TikTok does the same for reach. Ignore small gaps.

So triangulate. Record a baseline over the weeks before launch: sign-ups or installs per day, branded searches, direct traffic. Then read the lift over that baseline next to the tagged results, without launching another big action at the same time.

For paid distribution, lift tests isolate the effect. Meta's Brand Lift splits a sample into test and holdout groups and polls both on ad recall and awareness, and should not run while other Meta campaigns for the same brand or product are live. TikTok's Conversion Lift Study compares a randomized group that sees the ads with a control group that does not. Both measure ads, not organic posts.

Sources: Apple, user privacy and data use, Meta, about brand lift tests, TikTok, Conversion Lift Study (7 October 2024). Checked 2 October 2026.

A measurement plan in five steps

1. Before launch. Write down the objective, the primary KPI and the reading dates. Export a baseline of at least four weeks.
2. Tag. One link or code per creator and per video, logged in a sheet: video address, creator, platform, publication date, link, code.
3. Read on fixed days. Views can keep coming in, so read every video the same number of days after publication, for example day 2, day 7 and day 28. Ask creators for screenshots of their analytics, and ask early: Instagram insights only go back 90 days.
4. Compute. Apply the formulas to the full cost, with organic and paid kept apart, next to the lift over the baseline.
5. Decide. Keep the angle and the hook with the best hold rate and cost per result, and brief new variations on them. Before reusing a winning video in ads, check UGC usage rights and whitelisting; how to test it is in UGC ads on Meta and TikTok.

Common pitfalls

• Judging organic videos on last click only. It undercounts by design.
• Changing the creator, the hook and the landing page at once. You will not know what worked.
• Dividing a partial cost. Leaving out ad spend, rights or team time flatters every ratio.
• Expecting a fixed ratio from views to sign-ups. It varies with the product, the audience and the offer. Measure your own.

How UGC Pocket measures, and what it does not

At UGC Pocket, creators publish on their own declared TikTok and Instagram accounts, and we read the views of each video from its public statistics. Views are what a campaign is tracked on. We do not promise conversion tracking: clicks, sign-ups, installs and sales are measured on your side, with your own links, codes and analytics.

Our team builds the campaign and writes the video scripts, following the codes of the formats that work in your sector. It selects the creators and reviews every video. The core target is software, apps, services and training. Reuse of the videos in ads or on your site is defined in the commercial proposal. The price is from €2,000 per campaign, no subscription, price and terms set out in the commercial proposal. Nothing is billed by an AI agent or before acceptance.

Several other platforms also publish on the creator's account: see our UGC platform comparison. UGC Pocket is not the right choice if you want to test a few videos, need raw files delivered fast, sell a physical product that has to be unboxed, or have less than €2,000 to spend. To discuss a campaign, talk to the team.

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